hated Captain John Hanham - killed in single-shot double murder by Irish soldier

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Captain John Hanham 1823-1861 Information taken from various web sources including Paget family website quoting from Dorset Life: Private Patrick McCaffery, a 19-year old private with 32nd Regiment shot and killed the Depot's commander, Colonel Hugh Crofton, and Depot's adjutant, Captain John Hanham, with a single shot. The incident began over the McCaffery's punishment for failing to vigorously pursue an investigation into some children who had broken some windows at the barracks. McCaffery was tried and convicted at the Liverpool Assizes. He was executed on 11 January 1862. It is said that since that time, his ghost haunts the officer's mess at Fulwood barracks. Captain Hanham was killed by a single bullet at Fulwood Barracks at Preston in Lancashire in September 1861. According to a contemporary report, Capt. Hanham and the commanding officer of the Fulwood depot, Col. Hugh Crofton, were walking across the barracks square when a shot was fired, causing both to stagger and fall. A bullet from the rifle of the assassin had passed right through Col. Crofton’s lungs then through the chest of his companion and one of his lungs and lodged in his back; when it was extracted it was found to be quite flat. Col. Crofton died instantly and Capt. Hanham a few days later. Private Patrick McCaffrey, aged 19, was arrested and it quickly came to light that his target had been Capt. Hanham, his motive being to avenge the ‘considerable punishment’ the officer had imposed on him. He was said to show no remorse, saying that he had only intended to kill Capt. Hanham but that the death of Col. Crofton did not matter. The Wimborne Company of Volunteers provided an escort as the funeral procession of Capt. Hanham, followed by a huge crowd, wound its way by torchlight to the cemetery, where the officer was buried with military honours. Private McCaffrey was convicted of murder and publicly hanged outside Kirkdale Jail, Liverpool, in January 1862. The song in the folk repertoire, sometimes called McCafferty, or McCaffery, is about an ordinary soldier, of Irish birth, who shot a Colonel and a Captain, in the barracks at Preston, Lancashire, in 1861. He was tried for the crime and hanged at a jail in the Liverpool area, watched by a huge crowd of mainly Irish people. This was a sensational crime at the time. Although the motives of McCaffery do not seem to have had anything to do with Irish Nationalism, the song written about the incident has entered the repertoire of Irish folk song as well as that of the ordinary British soldier. The tune is also well known as that of the song "the Croppy Boy" (Croppy= Catholic nationalist, perhaps from having short hair). In fact his action seems to have been a reaction to bullying by Captain John Hanham, the Adjutant of the army base, wounded in the Sikh wars. He had a reputation as a Martinet (common euphemism for bully). Colonel Hugh Crofton, wounded in the Crimean war and commander of the barracks, a Training Depot, happened to be walking alongside and the bullet passed first through Crofton, then through Hanham. P> This was a time when the British army recruited large numbers of people from such areas as Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland, the solution to two problems: one was syphoning away potential rebels from Ireland and Scotland; and the other garrisoning the still expanding British Empire. For McCaffery himself, the army was probably the only escape he had from unemployment or very poor pay in the factories. He joined the 32nd regiment of Foot (not 42nd as in the song) after living in England in the Manchester and Liverpool area. While on sentry duty he was supposed to keep the soldiers' children away from the Officers' Mess, where they had recently broken the windows. Hanham had seen the children and ordered McCaffery to catch them and get the names of their parents. Because the children ran away he was able to get only one name. For this Hanham put him on a charge and Crofton sentenced him to two weeks CB - Confined to Barracks, extra inspections and dri... read more

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